{"id":43818,"date":"2023-06-21T13:41:35","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T17:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/948294437a.nxcli.io\/?p=43818"},"modified":"2024-01-20T01:26:19","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T06:26:19","slug":"are-you-leading-from-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/21\/are-you-leading-from-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Leading from Fear?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are You Leading from Fear? <\/strong><\/h1>\n

How Emotions Can Elevate Your Effectiveness<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

We often depict our leaders as fearless heroes. The romanticized notion of courageous warriors leading soldiers into battle informs how many people think and feel about leadership and how many leaders think about and even expect of themselves.<\/p>\n

While it is true that making difficult decisions might require courage, most leaders approach those decisions from a place of fear: fear of failure, of being wrong, or being outcast or vilified. Historically, leaders rightfully feared death, not only at the hands of their enemies but, like Julius Cesar, at the hands of Brutus, by those supposedly loyal and trusted.<\/p>\n

Business leaders, who are rarely at risk of death, are still afraid of what might happen or might not happen. They worry about how they will be perceived, how others\u2019 perceptions of them will impact their ability to lead, and whether they have what it takes to be successful, liked, loved, right, or worthy of their responsibilities. From those that rise up with bravado to those who secretly suffer, feeling they are imposters \u2013 the current of fear that courses through most leaders is palpable and debilitating.<\/p>\n

Great leaders tend to be courageous. But this doesn\u2019t mean that they do not experience fear. It simply means that they are prepared to manage their emotions so that their fear doesn\u2019t interfere with their ability to accomplish what matters most. They also learn to make their fear work for them by leaning in toward it rather than running from it. Fear is neither good nor bad; it is just a natural feeling. What you do with or as a consequence of your fear is what matters.<\/p>\n

Fear is a primal function common to all living beings, from insects and invertebrates to fish and mammals. Even viruses and bacteria tend to allude threats. What distinguishes fear in humans is our ability to manage our fear and, more importantly, to conjure fear through our furtive imaginations. We undermine our ability to imagine a better future with our ability to similarly project our fears.<\/p>\n

Great leaders tend to be courageous. But this doesn\u2019t mean that they do not experience fear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fear manifests in our minds, emotions, and physical reactions of the body. It is a complex awareness that is difficult but possible to manage and utilize effectively. Fear serves to protect us in the presence of imminent danger, but it also informs us to prepare for eventualities that may never come to pass. Fear, based on what we imagine might happen in the future, can be as excruciating and paralyzing as the presence of mortal danger.<\/p>\n

Fear may be one of the greatest motivators. Human beings are hard-wired to move towards things we perceive to be pleasant and away from things we perceive to be painful. The physical response to fear is not entirely emotional. The surge of adrenaline it produces summons the body into motion and directs your mind to focus, nearly exclusively, on whatever threat you perceive. But fear doesn\u2019t always drive action. The brain\u2019s alembic system triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response to threats. Freezing your motion, reducing your respiration and heart rate, and drawing your blood flow from your extremities to your vital organs makes sense when you cannot flee from or neutralize a physical threat. But freezing is useless when your fear keeps you from making a critically needed decision.<\/p>\n

While fear may elevate your ability to react, it also interferes with your capacity to focus your mind on anything but the threat in front of you. Fear hinders your capacity to creatively solve problems or be efficacious in your thinking. You need your thinking to be agile to sort out fiction from reality. Adrenaline cannot distinguish or validate a threat: when you are operating from a place of fear, you are just as likely to react to imagined threats as you are to actual ones.<\/p>\n

Fear may be one of the greatest motivators. Human beings are hard-wired to move towards things we perceive to be pleasant and away from things we perceive to be painful.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fear is powerful, but you have other equally powerful emotions that can better serve you as a leader.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Great leaders are not devoid of emotions. They leverage useful emotions and manage impulses triggered by negative emotions that undermine their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Courage is not an emotion, but a choice and a function of practice, commitment, and preparation. Great leaders recognize that it takes courage to take on the responsibilities and duties required of leadership \u2013 when most people would instead succumb to their fears.<\/p>\n

Courage is not an emotion, but a choice and a function of practice, commitment, and preparation.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a widespread misconception that being stoic and emotionless is a desired trait of leadership.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While it may be true that displaying panic or rage isn\u2019t a good thing, emoting empathy to win the hearts and minds of followers is the hallmark of exceptional leaders. But the most potent emotion available to leaders is a sense of duty.<\/p>\n

Leaders driven by a worthy indelible purpose possess a kind of power and influence that is not just formidable but also contagious. A sense of duty connected to a noble cause enables leaders to manage the negative emotions that might compromise their aims.<\/p>\n

Managing your emotions is both a function of discipline and emotional intelligence. There may be times when it is beneficial to \u201cappear\u201d stoic in the face of steep adversity. Still, your ability to manage rather than ignore your emotions makes you powerfully effective as a leader.<\/p>\n

Emotional intelligence, at its core, is the ability to employ empathy to improve your ability to understand and work well with others. Delaying gratification is fundamental to this sort of empathy, allowing you to choose to serve the needs of others or some sense of greater good rather than focus on your own needs or interests. That is the foundation of conscientiousness. Exceptional leaders are not only conscientious; they also develop people around them who are inspired to be conscientious.<\/p>\n

Leaders driven by a worthy indelible purpose possess a kind of power and influence that is not just formidable but also contagious. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Going beyond the basic evidence of emotional intelligence is a higher order to thinking and behavior that informs a sense of duty to contribute value for the benefit of others. I call this \u201ccontribution intelligence.\u201d For some people, it is a function of discipline in forming and living by certain personal values. For others, it just seems to come naturally.<\/p>\n

But in all cases, the contribution intelligence drives the accomplishment of things that matter and the deeply rewarding satisfaction you experience from doing so. That is the source of real joy, or MoJo \u2013 the moments of overwhelming joy that drive people to be conscientious and demonstrate grit \u2013 or the passion and perseverance needed to face obstacles and accomplish long-term goals.<\/p>\n

The challenge is, how do you summon emotional (and contribution) intelligence?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

To some extent, it is a skill that you can develop with practice. It is also a function of values you can learn and grow through study and practices like mindfulness. The science around emotional intelligence or EQ strongly suggests that it is a skill you can develop. The validated assessments available strongly demonstrate this to be the case.<\/p>\n

The challenges around developing EQ come down to the issues that impact learning and change in general. You must feel you can and have to. You will never accomplish something that cannot be done. And things that prove difficult require grit. You need an indelible sense of purpose to ignite your passion and persevere. Most people prefer to seek and maintain comfort than engage in what it takes to accomplish extraordinary things. It often shows up as a lack of self-control or commitment.<\/p>\n

The study of positive intelligence \u2013 and the book of that title by Shirzad Chamine speaks to the ability to learn to use self-command rather than self-control to manage how your emotions influence your behaviors. Self-control broadly amounts to resisting your impulses, while self-command is a function of creating habits of thinking that drive more desirable and productive behaviors.<\/p>\n

Mastering leadership comes down to mastering yourself. And you cannot grapple with change without understanding how your emotions drive how you think, who you are and what you do.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The challenge is that your impulses are hard-wired into your mental models of the world. Your behaviors are the product of habits that inform your thinking and enable you to live your life on autopilot, rather than examining the thousands of choices you face each and every day.<\/p>\n

Self-command is a construct that focuses on rewiring the pathways that guide your habits of thinking. The process involves identifying and understanding the value and cost of unproductive impulses and employing simple mindfulness exercises to build new pathways. You can then call on these pathways using the triggers you practice to create lasting change.<\/p>\n

If you recall that courage isn\u2019t the absence of fear, but the ability to prevent fear from hijacking your decisions, you should be able to imagine how employing self-command will help you conjure the courage you need to be more influential and effective as a leader.<\/p>\n

Moreover, you can learn to direct your emotions to be a more competent human being by improving your empathy, reacting to the emotional triggers that interfere with your capacity to perform, becoming more patient and diligent \u2013 and even becoming more curious. The traits that define highly effective and resourceful leaders are more a function of emotional resilience than the knowledge, skills, talent, or credentials you possess.<\/p>\n

Mastering leadership comes down to mastering yourself. And you cannot grapple with change without understanding how your emotions drive how you think, who you are and what you do.<\/p>\n

For leaders, the fear in your heart is a powerful engine that can compel great accomplishment \u2013 or catastrophic failure. The engine\u2019s power is not in the force but in how you direct that force. How you equip yourself and choose to lead your life is the basis of how you lead others. Will you allow your emotions to take you where you do not want to be? Or will you use your emotions to elevate your leadership effectiveness?<\/p>\n

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